Optimised Production with Data Transparency
HANNING & KAHL’s new SAP ERP system went live just in time for the turn of the year. A digitally-supported production tour now ensures that our manufacturing division also profits optimally from the newly gained data transparency.
By Reinhold Büker
In order to continuously improve our products and processes, we first have to recognise all major influential factors and illustrate them with performance indicators. The new ERP system helps us to do so: it transparently maps production processes and provides the appropriate performance indicators. This makes it much easier for us to assess possible influential factors. The perform-
ance indicators merely show current status however, they do not automatically lead to improvements. In a second step, these performance indicators must be analysed, and the right conclusions drawn from the findings. These are necessary to devise targeted solutions which sustainably improve the performance indicators.
Digital shopfloor boards
The ERP system will soon provide production staff access to consistent department-related performance indicators via digital shopfloor boards (large, centrally positioned displays). Digital shopfloor management makes data available faster than before. This central data source means one “single source of truth“, i.e. one universally valid data pool, which claims to be correct. This enables staff to retrieve specific current and reliable information on their department, e. g. on quality, productivity, occupational safety, employee presence / employee satisfaction, and also on supply performance, at any time. Each member of staff can also use the platform to specify current problems. This gives every employee; as a company expert, a further opportunity to actively weigh in with improvement potential for their particular department.
Production tour
Another new tool for CPI is the so-called production tour: a digitally-supported shopfloor meeting to be held at least twice a week per department. Facilitator and chair of the meeting is the respective departmental head. The departmental heads of all process-relevant adjoining departments, e. g. Quality Management, Purchasing Manager, Engineering Manager, Safety Engineer or Production Manager meet at the shopfloor boards in the respective department for a maximum of 30 minutes.
Before the meeting, the facilitator analyses the latest performance indicators and considers the topics or problems reported by his team. At the beginning of each meeting, open points from the last production tour are discussed, the measures revised and new responsible persons appointed if necessary. Then, the three most important new issues are discussed. Measures are stipulated and persons appointed to familiarise themselves with the topic in order to be able to propose solutions by the next production tour. The objective is to work quickly on major issues and achieve sustainable solutions.
If the participants of the production tour are not able to solve certain issues within two weeks, these matters will be transferred to a collective list of “Potentials” for the ESS/Kaizen team. This team will then assess improvement potential and urgency, paving the way for a measurable, sustainable and robust solution via targeted processing in CIP workshops or CIP projects with Lean Six Sigma tools.